WELCOME!

I cannot believe 2024 is here! I’m so excited to be launching our first newsletter to kick off the new year. It has been an amazing first year building our community of music lovers on Youtube and Instagram. I truly want everyone to know that this is our community. I hope to bring you amazing content that will help you become a better musician and creator. It’s going to be exciting to see how this newsletter develops, and I always welcome your ideas and input. In the end, it is my hope to bring you amazing musical content that helps you fall deeper in love with music and creation. Let’s get this party started, my friend!

MUSIC THEORY

I’m always amazed at how many musicians have zero knowledge of music theory. Of course you don’t need to know theory to become a great musician, but isn’t knowledge power? Wouldn’t you want to know on a deeper level and use that knowledge to make you even better?

Let’s look at a small piece of the music theory puzzle below. I think this is the perfect foundation for beginning your journey of truly understanding theory and then building upon it. This is a cutout of from the circle of fifths. This is a picture of the the family of chords from the Key of C Major. This is the main tool I used for every single thing I do in music.

Let’s first focus on the roman numerals associated with all of the notes/chords. You will notice C is represented by the Roman numeral I. This means that C is the 1 chord in the Key of C major. If the Roman numeral is a capital letter, that chord is major, if it is lower case, that chord is minor. Look at Dm, Em, Am, and you will clearly see lower case Roman numerals to represent those chords. There is just so much information packed into this one picture, but you have to start connecting the dots somewhere.

To wrap this up, just focus on the 1 to 7 chords and see if you can memorize them. Try and remember the I, IV, V chords are major and the ii, iii, vi are minor. The vii is the good old minor 7 flat 5, but more on that later. We will also cover the chord to the far right that says (V of V), but for now, we need to just take baby steps. One day at a time, my friend, and you are on your way to really grasping this music theory stuff.

Want your own Chord Wheel? You can get one HERE!

GEAR CORNER — My Old Faithful: The BOSS DD-3

I bought this pedal in 1992 and toured for years with it. It has been used in thousands of shows and been abused and beat down. It is still going and that is a testament to how good the BOSS brand is. There stuff just works and lasts forever. There are so many choices out there these days. Don’t sleep on anything by BOSS. This pedal has been used all over my favorite records from bands like Sublime, Rage Against the Machine, Janes Addiction, Nirvana, and so many more. It may say “digital” but it sounds like analog home to me. I will take this one to the grave. Keep your ears peeled too. I will be featuring this one all over our upcoming EP this year. Can’t wait to share some amazing originals with you that feature this beautiful little box of sound!

THE MERCH SHOP IS OPEN

Do you like hats and shirts? Because we’ve got both! Now, you can rep your favorite Music Lab in style. And the best part is, 10% of all proceeds goes to charity.

For 2024, that means 10% goes to Oceana, an awesome conservation organization working to protect the world’s oceans—you can learn more about them here!

ORIGINAL MUSIC PROJECT — Stay Tuned!

I’m going to be working on an original music project for 2024 and cannot wait to share it with all of you! I love that we are building new models of music, and this project will be no exception. I will be co-writing many of these songs with my friend and collaborator Alex. We have build a pretty neat little system of production. Currently we meet on Zoom and work live inside of a Logic session to compose all of the tracks. For now, we have many pieces of music in place, but will be fleshing those out into full tracks in the near future. Stay tuned, and we will be rolling out demo reels to get your feedback and thoughts.